[New RPV Exec. Dir. Shaun Kenney] had a pretty good first day on the job, too. Ken Cuccinelli stepped up to the plate and gave us $25,000 to help us put all of our attention on Mark Warner going into the fall! Ken hasn’t stopped fighting Obamacare yet, and I’m grateful that he’s staying in the fight!

How about donating a chunk of that to the party that you professed to love? Perhaps he isn’t done throwing his temper tantrum yet or maybe he’s planning to be the next John Chichester / Russ Potts and become the “Republican” that seeks attention by endorsing Democratic candidates.

We are now over a week past Election Day 2013, and a dangerous revisionism is sweeping across the right in Virginia. I have watched in amazement as Ken Cuccinelli has practically escaped all blame for what is arguably the worst performance by a Republican nominee for Governor since 1985 (using percentage of the total vote as the standard). I’ve seen blame thrown at his ticket-mates (well, one of them anyway), the Republican National Committee, the “establishment”, “RINOs”, Bill Bolling, etc.

However, take a broader view of the election and it becomes clear that Cuccinelli did this to himself and his ticket-mates, with a horrific slew of mistakes on the tax issue. Ken Cuccinelli lost because he was a squish.

I know I am just about the only blogger in the Virginia rightosphere to say that, but let’s be honest. Would any other Republican who spoke with pride about his role in raising taxes – not once, mind you, but twice – get the accolades and pats on the back that Ken is receiving now? To ask the question is to answer it.

Outside of Virginia, most of the high- and medium-profile races were in the northeast. In New Jersey – a state that gave Obama 58% in 2012 – a pro-life, anti-same-sex-marriage Republican Governor ran for re-election, but with a record of lowering taxes. Chris Christie did two points better than Obama. Meanwhile, in Westchester County – a suburb so full of limousine liberals that Obama did better there than he did in Fairfax – Republican County Executive Rob Astorino faced a barrage of negative ads about his social conservative view. However, he also had a record of low taxes, and won re-election easily.

If that’s not enough, consider this. Ken Cuccinelli actually did come closer to victory (2.5%) than Mitt Romney did (3.9%), but in the areas most affected by the tax increases Cuccinelli defended and praised, he lost by a larger margin than Romney’s.

I have seen Republicans in Virginia fall for the same, failed model for a dozen years: social conservatives hoping to win over the center by supporting, defending, or refusing to oppose tax increases. It has been an unfettered disaster, and Ken Cuccinelli was just the latest to make that mistake…bringing down his fellow statewide candidates in the process.

The message from 2013 is crystal clear: Republicans who take pride in raising taxes will lose, period. Folks, Ken Cuccinelli did this to himself.

UPDATE: I would also note that in Prince William County, long considered the swing county in the state, only one Republican Delegate voted for Plan ’13 From Outer Space; he went on to become the only incumbent GOP delegate in the county to be defeated at the polls.

In this article from ‘The Amercican Spectator‘ Jeffrey Lord provides some great analysis of what is, and has been taking place within the Republican Party where so-called ‘Good Republicans’ like Bill Bolling have worked for decades to insure the failure of Conservative candidates like Ken Cuccinelli.

A Republican Attorney General popular with the social conservative movement bests a Republican Lt. Gov. rooted in the business community for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. A multi-millionaire Democrat nominee for governor with no elected experience and a questionable history about how he made his money. An unexpected Republican nominee for Lt. Governor popular with the grassroots, but woefully underfunded. A major national event that freezes the race for weeks.

If you guessed these were Ken Cuccinelli, Bill Bolling, Terry McAuliffe, E.W Jackson, and the government shutdown, you’d be right.

If you guessed these were Mark Earley, John Hager, Mark Warner, Jay Katzen, and 9/11, you’d be right, too.

Everything old is new again in politics. Everything is cyclical. In retrospect, the dynamics at work in 2013 were extremely similar to what happened 12 years ago in so many ways. About the only difference was in the Attorney General’s race which more resembled the 2005 election where a Republican member of the General Assembly, Bob McDonnell, narrowly defeated a Democrat state senator, Creigh Deeds, by just a few hundred votes. (Even there, we had a Mark vs. Mark race like in the 2001 gubernatorial election.)

So, what forces are at work now and what past election year will 2014 be like?

A president in his second term. A deeply unpopular policy considered to be the signature one of his presidency. A popular Virginia U.S. senator (and former governor) from the same party as the president considered a major contender for president himself in the next election who voted for that policy. No big name contenders from the other party in the race against said senator.

If you guessed George W. Bush, the Iraq War, George Allen, and Jim Webb / Harris Miller, you’d be right.

The 2014 election is tracking to be almost exactly like 2006 with Barack Obama, Obamacare, Mark Warner, and a still evolving GOP field as the players this time around. Something to consider for any Republican with an interest in jumping in the senate race next year. My advice to whoever may be on the fence — get in the race. You don’t want to wind up kicking yourself for passing on it the way so many Democrats did after Jim Webb beat Allen. Just make sure that you hammer Warner continuously for having cast the 60th and deciding vote to enact Obamacare and how that decision has hurt the American economy and destroyed full-time job creation in this country. At the same time, have a message of your own about what you want to accomplish as one of Virginia’s U.S. senators. If you do those two things, you can win.

UPDATE: Virtucon friend Ben Marchi has floated the name of Brig. Gen. Bert Mizusawa (USAR) to play the Jim Webb role in ’14 against Warner’s Allen. Very interesting indeed.

The Daily Caller reports on a burgeoning movement to get Ken Cuccinellito run for U.S. Senate against Mark Warner next year. As columnist Quin Hillyer put it:

The nasty attacks McAuliffe used against Cuccinelli would “look redundant and a little desperate” in a Senate campaign; Cuccinelli could likely count on more support from the Republican establishment who care about winning control of the Senate; and Cuccinelli has proven that “ObamaCare will be an albatross around donkey necks next fall as well, and especially around the necks of senators such as Warner, without whose vote the dreadful law would not have passed.”

“Cuccinelli’s loss this week surely isn’t the end of his political career,” Hillyer said. “It has more the feel of Ronald Reagan’s loss to Gerald Ford in 1976, laying the groundwork for triumph to come.”

The DC also noted:

One Republican operative who has worked in Virginia politics referenced Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial campaign and said the “effectiveness of the Obamacare message” at the end of the Cuccinelli campaign “certainly provides fodder for folks to speculate that strong incumbents like Warner and [New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen] Shaheen could be vulnerable.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. The Obamacare website is just the tip of the problem. Once people start seeing what their premiums are through it, the rage will only grow against the program. Ken can make an even stronger case against Mark Warner on the issue of Obamacare than he did against Terry McAuliffe given that Warner actually voted FOR the bill – providing the crucial 60th vote needed for it to pass.

Cuccinelli can argue that Obamacare is hurting the economy and destroying full-time job opportunities as a means to hammer Warner on jobs and his failure to do anything significant in the Senate. No wonder Warner was part of the meeting of 16 Democrat U.S. Senators who are up for reelection next year to visit the White House yesterday to talk about the problems with Obamacare.

As NBC’s Chuck Todd said, another week of Obamacare stories and McAuliffe would have been toast. Fortunately, there are 52 MORE weeks before the 2014 mid-term elections.

This is a clear message from Gov. Bob McDonnell to Establishment Republicans – get out and vote for the entire GOP ticket tomorrow. These nominees may not have been the ones that you would have preferred, but they are head and shoulders better than the Democrat alternatives. Don’t make Virginia suffer for four years out of spite. Politics is a two-way street and conservatives back our nominees regardless of whether that is who they supported in the nomination. The Establishment must return the favor now that it is their turn.

Dear Friend,

Tomorrow, voters all across Virginia will head to the polls to cast their ballots in the 2013 election. The stakes could not be higher and today I’m asking you to please vote for our Republican ticket.

Four years ago today I was standing at the State Capitol talking to the press about our historic sweep that had occurred the night before. Thanks to your support, help and hard work we received the most votes of any candidate for governor in Virginia history. We won localities from Fairfax to Buchanan. And with that strong support, we got to work.

Together with Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling and our next governor, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, we set about putting in place common-sense conservative policies that would get positive results for our people. Here’s what Republican leadership has achieved:

Over the last four years over 167,000 net new jobs have been created in Virginia

The state unemployment rate has fallen from 7.4 percent to 5.8 percent today; the lowest unemployment rate in the Southeast and the 3rd-lowest east of the Mississippi

We’ve posted four straight budget surpluses totaling nearly 2 billion dollars. That’s the first time a Virginia administration has put up four consecutive surpluses since the administration of Governor George Allen in the 1990’s

We passed Virginia’s first major transportation funding plan since 1986, finally addressing a challenge that had been impeding economic growth and hurting our citizens’ quality of life for nearly 30 years

We made college more affordable and accessible, adding 14,000 new slots for undergraduate students and seeing the lowest average yearly tuition increases in a decade

We reduced the unfunded liabilities in our pension system by 9 billion dollars

We put in place new innovative programs and policies in our K-12 system to give students, parents and teachers more resources, accountability and choice

And just a month ago, Forbes.com named Virginia “America’s Best State for Business.”

THAT is what Republican leadership looks like!

More Virginians are working. Our economy is stronger. Transportation and education are well funded. Virginia is on the right track.

Gee, think the Democrats are getting antsy about their chances tomorrow? Just get a load of what the DPVA is doing according to Del. Scott Lingamfelter who received a robocall from them last night.

About 25 minutes ago (7:24 PM 3 November) the Democratic Party of Virginia dropped a robo-call (that they said they paid for in the recording) at MY house to try to tell ME that Ken Cuccinelli supports Obamacare and public financing of abortion!!! Virginia, pa-leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzz understand that the party that wants Terry McAuliffe to be your governor will flat lie about anything! If you want proof that they will say ANYTHING to gain power over you and your life, you need go no further than the “robo-lies” they are sending around Virginia this Sunday evening. They are shameless in their tactics. (I guess they are trying to suppress GOP voters.)

Every election, philosophical libertarians are faced with a conundrum: should we vote for principle/stay home or vote for the lesser of two evils. Democrats tend to be better on personal liberty issues and Republicans tend to be better on economic liberty issues. Occasionally you find the odd “moderate” that seems to be bad on both sets of issues. At least then we have something to vote against.

I am supporting Ken Cuccinelli for Governor in 2013. I found this decision easy, but my hope is that philosophical libertarians will take a strong look at Cuccinelli.

The source

I worked for Ken Cuccinelli as an attorney for the first four years of my career up until he took office as Attorney General. During that time I was exposed to many aspects of his life: his law career, political actions, and his family. I have had uncountable private conversations with Cuccinelli about his beliefs and actions.

What follows is my take on his beliefs vis-a-vis libertarianism. Unless I attribute the statement directly to him, it is merely my understanding. I will point out a few tidbits that he has not hidden, but are not known in a widespread fashion.

Principled stand on the Second Amendment

Most people know that Ken Cuccinelli is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. What most people do not know is that support for gun control polled well above 50% in his Senate district, and he knew it was the case. In three elections there he did not waiver in his support of the Second Amendment despite knowing it was a dangerous position to take politically. He was repeatedly elected on principle and stuck to those principles. Libertarians tend to worry that Democrats and Republicans will abandon their libertarian leaning principles upon election. Cuccinelli does not.

Opponent of the overreach of police powers

Whether it is search and seizure, the rights of the accused, or dare I say, the death penalty, Cuccinelli repeatedly falls on the side civil liberties. Cuccinelli was constantly seeking to reduce the ability of localities to spy on citizens, whether it be through warrantless searches or traffic cameras. He supported restoration of voting rights to released felons. He knows all too well that our criminal justice system, despite its general effectiveness and a great many honorable public servants, sometimes falls short of doing justice. Cuccinelli personally took up the cause of the 27 year wrongfully imprisoned Thomas Haynesworth. To the press and to casual observers this appeared to be an aberration. To those of us who knew Cuccinelli, none of this surprised us. This is one of the reasons why Cuccinelli has such a dedicated base of followers.

Defender of the First Amendment

Ken Cuccinelli was lead counsel on a major case seeking to invalidate a law passed by the General Assembly that restricted the free association of political parties. This lawsuit originally entitled Miller v. Brown, successfully invalidated a restriction on how political parties can nominate candidates.

Cuccinelli’s religious beliefs

Cuccinelli takes a lot of flak for his stances on abortion and gay marriage. Cuccinelli believes that life begins at conception and deserves protection in the womb. He does not want to prevent access to contraception, but he does not consider abortion, chemical or surgical, to be “contraception.” This is identical to the position of Ron Paul, a supporter of Cuccinelli. Ron Paul reached his conclusions, in part, from being a practicing obstetrician. Cuccinelli does not take this position lightly.

Cuccinelli is opposed to state sponsored gay marriage. He does not believe in “criminalizing blow jobs.” It would take 500-1000 words, perhaps more, to explain the appeal of the ruling invalidating Virginia’s anti sodomy law. In short, the Attorney General’s brief submitted to the 4th Circuit en banc, and the Supreme Court both fully acknowledged in writing that the law cannot constitutionally ban sexual activity between consenting adults. It is my strong belief that the tide of public opinion and the court system will overtake his positions in the next 5-10 years.

If your feelings on one or both of these issues control your vote, please vote your conscience, just please remember not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The final take

Cuccinelli, in the end, believes that the greatest minority is the individual and the protection of individual liberties is the primary purpose of government. Civil liberties, economic liberties, and constitutional freedom are the baseline for Cuccinelli. In the end, Cuccinelli is the strongest pro-liberty candidate to run statewide in Virginia with a reasonable chance of winning in modern history. He is not the lesser of two evils, he is a good that is worthy of your consideration.

Please get out and vote on Tuesday November 5, and no matter your take on Cuccinelli I look forward to working with all liberty minded individuals in the future.

I hope you’ve seen the most recent Quinnipiac poll, which shows the Governor’s race is closing dramatically. Meanwhile, projections continue to show a very low turnout on Election Day. This makes our end-of-election work even more important! In 2005, Bob McDonnell won statewide office by only 323 votes, and in 2007, Ken Cuccinelli only won his Senate seat by 92 votes. Your work can truly make the difference for Cuccinelli / Jackson / Obenshain!

How can you help?

1. This weekend will be our last chance to convince Republicans to get out and vote. We need volunteers to make phone calls and knock on doors. Please report in at your local Victory office, which you can find, here. (In Charlottesville, I will be knocking on doors on Saturday starting at 10:00 a.m. If you have a few hours on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, please come by the headquarters in Albemarle Square – at the corner of 29 and Rio.)

3. Call your friends and family. With the low turnout, don’t assume that your conservative friends are automatically voting. Take an hour on Sunday night and just confirm that everyone will be able to get to the polls on Tuesday.

Let’s win this thing!

Sincerely,

Rob Bell
Delegate, 58th District

PS: If you are working on Election Day and have legal problems or concerns, the RPV Election Day Incident Hotline is 571-354-6755.

Fmr. U.S. Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) has released the following statement regarding the new Quinnipiac poll showing that Ken Cuccinelli has closed the gap with Terry McAuliffe to just 4% in the past week.

“Watch out folks, Cuccinelli is one of the best closers in Virginia and the President has upped the ante by coming in this weekend! This has shaped up to be a big opportunity for folks to send Washington a message on ObamaCare.” – Tom Davis

Ken Cuccinelli has cut Terry McAuliffe’s lead in half this past week to just 4% according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. Last week, the Q-pac poll had McAuliffe leading the race 46-39%. The brand new poll now has the race at 45-41%. The margin of error of +/- 2.9% with a 4% lead makes this race a dead heat.

This poll had a much larger likely voter sample than the WashPo poll – 1,182 compared to the Post’s 762. Without Libertarian Robert Sarvis in the race, McAuliffe’s lead drops to 2%, 47-45%.

Could this be a reflection of the lack of voter intensity for McAuliffe that we spotlighted yesterday? Well, that seems to be what the Q-pac pollsters are indicating may be happening.

“State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is nipping at Terry McAuliffe’s heels as the race to be Virginia’s next governor enters the final week of the campaign,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “It goes without saying that turnout is the key to this race and the harshly negative tone of the campaign is the kind that often turns off voters.”

“With the race this close, the final decision by the roughly one in 10 voters who are supporting Libertarian Robert Sarvis has become even more critical. Nationally, third-party candidates often lose support in the end as voters enter the voting booth and back someone they consider the lesser of two evils. Only six in 10 Sarvis supporters say they definitely will vote for him. Almost nine in 10 McAuliffe and Cuccinelli backers are committed.

Ken is closing strong as he always does. What does McAuliffe do at the end? Well, let’s look at the closing days of his 2009 primary run:

Terry McAuliffe spent $68.25 for each vote on the Democratic primary compared to Creigh Deeds who spent $14.49 for each vote.

The new Washington Post poll that shows Terry McAuliffe leading Ken Cuccinelliby 12%, 51-39%, has some very interesting results in deeper poll questions that raise the question of voter intensity.

Q: (Among McAuliffe supporters) Is your vote more for McAuliffe, or more against Cuccinelli?

For McAuliffe 34% / Against Cuccinelli 64%

Q: (Among Cuccinelli supporters) Is your vote more for Cuccinelli, or more against McAuliffe?

For Cuccinelli 50% / Against McAuliffe 44%

So, half of Cuccinelli supporters are doing so because they are supporting him versus only one-third of McAuliffe supporters who are voting for their candidate.

First of all, this shows exactly how effective McAuliffe’s multi-million media blitz to demonize Cuccinelli has been. There is no denying that.

Second, however, it exposes a potential Achilles’ heel for McAuliffe similar to the one that brought him down in the 2009 Democratic primary.

When you look at the Likely Voter sample of 762 in the Post poll, the 51-39% split translates to a 389-297 McAuliffe advantage. When you take into account those who say they are actually voting FOR their candidate as opposed to against the other guy, the advantage switches to Cuccinelli 149-132 or 49-43% (assuming Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis maintains the 8% he has in the WashPo poll.)

Voters are more likely to show up at the polls on Election Day to vote FOR their candidate than they are to go and vote against someone, especially when the alternative isn’t much more palatable in their eyes. Positive voter intensity remains the edge for Cuccinelli. In a low turnout election like this one promises to be, that can make for some very surprising upsets.

“Terry McAuliffe literally did nothing for Virginia or Virginians before deciding to run for governor. Nothing. Some people run to do something, and some people run to be something.”

I agree with Ken Cuccinelli about Terry McAuliffe. But why isn’t Cuccinelli taking his own advice and repeating over and over and over again exactly what it is that he wants to do? We’ve heard virtually NOTHING about his “Economic Growth & Virginia Jobs Plan” since that was unveiled back in May whereas four years ago Bob McDonnell latched on to jobs and repeated it ad nauseum right through Election Day.

Even two months before Election Day, he had a great opportunity to pick up the ball and run with it on taxes given the news out of North Carolina that they’re working on eliminating their state income tax (something that I had suggested he do four months before then – a full six months before Election Day and even before the RPV Convention.) Instead, as both campaigns limp towards the finish line on Nov. 5, we get a conference call with the media about McAuliffe and unions? Seriously? I don’t care how shocking the revelations may be since McAuliffe being in bed with the unions should be as surprising as the sun rising in the east every morning.

So, to any and all aspiring candidates, PLEASE take Ken Cuccinelli’s advice to “run to do something,” but also be sure to articulate it over and over and over again so voters know exactly what you want to do. That is how you win…

We’re in the closing weeks of heated campaigns for Governor and the House of Delegates and what do we find? Campaign door hangers around Prince William County. But these aren’t for candidates.

VDOT is out campaigning for this highly controversial road at the same time that Ken Cuccinelli, Tim Hugo, Scott Lingamfelter, Rich Anderson, and Bob Marshall are all on the ballot in this same area. Each of those candidates just also happen to have come out against this project in the configuration that VDOT is pushing.

This looks a lot like Sean Connaughton’s VDOT (and Sean’s successor as PWC Chair Corey Stewart who is locally championing this road) working to undercut Cuccinelli and PWC’s GOP Delegates in the General Assembly right before Election Day.

Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the 1988 Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States and a preeminent leader of the libertarian movement in America today, has strongly endorsed Republican Ken Cuccinelli for Virginia Governor.

Click on the letter below to read the full text of the endorsement.

In doing so, Congressman Paul spurned Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian Party candidate in this race. Dr. Paul has obviously taken the view that Sarvis cannot win and that between the two candidates who are positioned to win, Cuccinelli better serves the cause of liberty than Terry McAuliffe.

The following is the script to an ad that Ken Cuccinelli should run in the closing weeks of this campaign to drive home exactly what Terry McAuliffe’s policies would mean for Virginia. (And I’ve got the five people in mind who could appear in this ad, too.)

Person 1: “I was born and raised in New York.”

Person 2: “Syracuse.”

Person 3: “Plattsburgh.”

Person 4: “Long Island.”

Person 5: “Queens.”

Person 1: “Albany.”

Person 2: “But I chose to move to Virginia.”

Person 3: “Because New York’s taxes got too high.”

Person 4: “And job opportunities became too few.”

Person 5: “Now, fellow former New Yorker Terry McAuliffe.”

Person 1: “Wants to be Governor of Virginia.”

Person 2: “And bring New York’s failed liberal policies here.”

Person 3: “Don’t let Terry McAuliffe destroy Virginia’s economy.”

Person 4: “The same way his extreme liberal pals have destroyed New York’s.”

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s QPac poll showing Ken Cuccinelliand Terry McAuliffe within the margin of error (McAuliffe +3), a new Roanoke College poll has been released showing the race is even tighter with McAuliffe holding just a single-point lead, 37% to 36%. As the month of September has progressed, the spread between the two candidates has shrunk considerably.

In fact, if you only look at the polls completed in just the past week, the 4.2% average lead for McAuliffe drops to 3%. This comes AFTER McAuliffe wasted $8 million advertising during the month of August to try and paint Cuccinelli as a wacko extremist.

The recent spate of stories in the Washington Post and elsewhere are reinforcing the public perception that Cuccinelli is a serious, trustworthy and competent policy wonk while McAuliffe has an almost total disregard for the details and is by and large just winging it. In fact, the Post ran ANOTHER such story today:

The speeches [at the Richmond forum on education and the conomy] themselves fed into the narrative that emerged from the TechPAC flap: that McAuliffe is breezy while Cuccinelli grasps the details and gravity of the job. Both candidates had 45 minutes to address the group. Cuccinelli gave a 39- minute address heavy on wonky details. McAuliffe gave his standard 16-minute stump speech.

It seems that the more people (and even the media) pay attention, the more they realize that Cuccinelli has a firm grasp of the issues and would serve as a good steward of the Commonwealth while McAuliffe, by contrast, is a loose cannon on a rolling deck.

There has been a lot of to and fro this week over the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s Tech PAC endorsement of Ken Cuccinelli in the governor’s race as well as the behind the scenes machinations to try and rescind or blunt its impact. Apparently, Terry McAuliffe & Friends’bullying tactics didn’t sit well with members of Tech PAC. Not only did they go forward with the endorsement of Cuccinelli, but they also unloaded lots of juicy details about McAuliffe’s less than stellar interview.

Among them:

The reasoning behind the NVTC TechPAC’s nod — Cuccinelli had detailed responses to questions in candidate interviews, three board members said, while McAuliffe was uninformed and superficial

. . .

they were shocked at his mishandling of the endorsement process itself — and his misread of the serious and thoughtful approach to the issues that the council was expecting to hear from both candidates.

. . .

Cuccinelli impressed the board’s majority as a serious, detail-oriented candidate while McAuliffe seemed to wing it

. . .

Two people present said that in response to a question about how he’d accomplish his goals as governor, McAuliffe told the PAC board that as an Irish Catholic he’d be adept at taking people out for drinks and doing whatever it takes to get things done.

. . .

On a question about whether Virginia should stay in something called the “open-trade-secrets pact,” Cuccinelli gave a thoroughly researched response, the person said.

But McAuliffe answered, according to the source: “ ‘I don’t know what that is. I’ll have to look it up later.’ And then he turns back to the guy [who asked] and said ‘Well, what do you think we should do?’ And the guy says, ‘We want Virginia to stay in it.’ And then Terry says, ‘Okay, we will.’ ”

Believe it or not, every single one of those things was printed in . . . The Washington Post! String it all together and you get that McAuliffe is nothing but an “uninformed and superficial” drunkard who is winging it.